Our sustainability commitment

Our sustainable solutions

Our current portfolio offers a wide range of sustainable product solutions for the Automotive, Packaging, Electronics, Sports & Leisure and Furniture markets. Over 60% of the raw materials we use have a bio-based origin and offer enhanced performance as well as opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of the end product formulation. Many of our products also offer extensive in-use benefits reducing energy consumption and production defects.

Smart Materials offers unique performance solutions to the Polymers, Adhesives, Coatings, and Inks markets. These performance benefits are achieved with our global portfolio of largely bio-based functional additives and building blocks.

Our performance additives and building blocks already contribute to sustainable and more durable plastics, VOC free coatings, safer and lighter cars, thinner and stronger mobile devices, and safer and brighter inks.

The combined product portfolio, knowledge, upcoming product innovations and our 2030 ambition offer a unique position for us to support customers and partners across the value chain in accelerating and achieving their sustainability targets in the years to come.

How we contribute to help you and your customers to achieve your sustainability targets

A pathway to low to negative carbon footprint materials, using bio-based ingredients

Over 80% of our global product portfolio offers a low to negative carbon footprint while meeting your product performance requirements. Our performance additives, bio-based building blocks and ECO-surfactants are largely based on bio-based raw materials with a negative carbon footprint. That is the cradle to gate footprint, not yet taking into account in-use benefits when using these raw materials in your application.

We have implemented a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology to confirm the carbon footprint. Sustainable sourcing strategy, product development and processing are critical elements to continuously improve the LCA for our products. A recent example is the investment in our US facility in Atlas Point. This plant now produces 100% bio-based non-ionic surfactants and this has significantly reduced the carbon footprint of our range of Tween and Brij surfactants. The percentage of bio-based content is available per product in the product finder.

• Safe ingredients meeting regulatory requirements to offer consumer friendly formulations
  It is our responsibility to minimize the use of hazardous materials, to meet stricter legislative regulation and we continuously innovate to offer solutions that help you to meet both the latest and future regulatory requirements. More information by product can be found in the product finder.
• Reduction of VOC and emissions in coatings, adhesives, polymer processing and Inks
  Our bio-based surfactants (ECO range, Maxemul, LoVOCoat) offer the solution to formulate water borne resins and paints to prevent the use of solvents and meet regional VOC legislations without impacting performance. The slip Additives (Crodamide and Incroslip) and mould release agents (IncroMold) offer processing in-use benefits. They contribute to reduced energy consumption, less defects and faster processing.
• Improved value chain transparency through certified sustainable ingredients
  To support the growing demand for value chain transparency we have pro-active programs to certify our bio-based raw materials. In addition, a selection of our portfolio is certified by the USDA bio-preferred program.

Contribution to the transition to circular economies by using recycled ingredients, durable and circular design

We have a number of product examples that contribute to the circular economy:

• Our anti-scratch additives IncroMold K allows for durable plastic component design. The range of hydrophobic bio-based building blocks Pripol offer excellence car body protection. The bio-based dimer diamine Priamine 1075 displays repetitive self-healing properties in polyimide films to meet durable design requirements.
• We are exploring partnership opportunities to extend our offering and jointly develop circular solutions.

We measure the environmental impact of our materials from cradle to gate and, where possible, until end of life. We apply LCA assessments to gain insights and seek for continuous improvements in our sustainable product portfolio.